Daniel C. Peterson a top Mormon apologist. I'm going to comment on a case he makes for Mormonism:
As a leading Mormon apologist and scholar, this is an example of the best case that can be made for Mormonism. It's downhill from there.
I don't claim to be an expert on Mormonism. If, however, a Mormon asked me why I'm not a Mormon, Peterson is a good foil to express some of my reasons:
First of all, the evidence strongly supports the traditional account in saying that the original manuscript was orally dictated.
That may largely be true, although the long verbatim/paraphrastic quotations from Isaiah suggest that he did sometimes use written sources.
Father Whitmer, who was present very frequently during the writing of this manuscript [i.e., the Book of Mormon] affirms that Joseph Smith had no book or manuscript, before him from which he could have read as is asserted by some that he did, he (Whitmer) having every opportunity to know whether Smith had Salomon Spaulding’s or any person’s romance to read from.
That's misleading. The point is not that Smith is reciting another writer. Smith's imagination could be colored by sources without having to memorize them or recite them verbatim. So that's a straw man. Many creative writers are influenced by other writers. That doesn't mean they copy them directly. I'm not claiming that the Spaulding theory is the correct explanation. I'm just pointing out that Peterson's presentation is fallacious.
The first general category “Subjective Explanations” which has two parts: Individual Hallucination (by Joseph Smith) and Collective Hallucination (by Joseph Smith, the Witnesses, etc.)The second general category “Objective Reality, but Fraudulent.” This has three parts. You have the possibility of Individual Deceit (practiced by Joseph Smith unaided), then there is the possibility of Collective Deceit (by Joseph Smith, the Witnesses, etc.), and finally Collective Deceit (by Joseph Smith and some external individual or group). You could divide, I suppose, collaboration with an external group or exploitation; stealing somebody else’s manuscript barring Salomon Spaulding’s manuscript or something like that.The third general category is “Objective Reality, with ‘Supernatural’ Explanations.” You have three possibilities there at least: The Book of Mormon is Supernatural but demonic (that’s becoming popular in certain rather odd quarters), it’s true scripture, but not ancient, and it’s simply true scripture (the traditional explanation).
These aren't mutually exclusive. In principle, there could be both natural and supernatural factors in play–although I think Smith is probably explicable on mundanely naturalistic grounds.
First in what I term the “subjective explanations.” The first one in that category is Individual Hallucination (by Joseph Smith). Now this explanation seems to be virtually impossible to accept. I realize there are fairly fresh books out on the market talking about the Book of Mormon as an attempt by Joseph Smith to work out his Freudian anxieties and things like that. To me these things absolutely disappoint. There are simply too many corroborating witnesses for the Book of Mormon to be taken seriously as the product of individual hallucination. If Joseph Smith was simply fantasizing in some pathological parallel universe, it is exceedingly difficult to explain the fact that many others claim to have seen the holes in the ground, the stone receptacle, the angels, the plates, the breastplates, the Urim and Thummim, the sword of Laban, and all the other things that his wholly subjective fantasies called for. It’s very odd that other people are seeing these things that don’t exist.So, we are led necessarily to another possibility: Collective Hallucination (by Joseph Smith, the Witnesses, etc.). This explanation is only slightly more plausible. It is virtually impossible to imagine a hallucination that continued over weeks, months and years, involving numerous people whose hallucinatory illusions were so coherent and congruent with one another...Moreover, many who were at the scene seem to support Joseph Smith’s story occurred under wholly matter-of-fact conditions: David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, for example, climbing onto the Hill Cumorah and seeing the stone box from which the plates were taken. Emma Smith feeling the plates through their thin muslin cloth, moving them around while she does housework. Lucy Mack Smith seeing the breastplate. The eight witnesses themselves, standing in a clearing in the woods in broad daylight leafing through the plates. William Smith estimating their weight at about 60 pounds.
i) I'll grant you that hallucination probably isn't a plausible explanation for Smith and his witnesses. Mind you, although naturally-induced mass hallucination may be psychologically impossible, that doesn't rule out demonic mass hallucination. However, that's not the first explanation I'd reach for.
ii) Is his wife a disinterested character witness? Didn't she have a stake in vouching for her husband?
We’ll first look at various explanations holding that, yes, there was an objective reality but it was an artifact of fraud. First, there is the concept of Individual Deceit (practiced by Joseph Smith, unaided). It seems difficult to credit this as a believable explanation for the Book of Mormon. We’ve seen the evidence (you would have if you had read what I’ve written which isn’t finished) there is evidence anyway of Joseph Smith’s sincerity and good character, which makes it difficult to imagine that he would be party to such deceit. Of course, there is one theory that Joseph was a “pious fraud,” lying for Jesus, concocting a tale with which to resist the then-popular heresy of Deism. Whether even such a notion is compatible with the many testimonies of his honesty and character is dubious, in my view.
i) He dabbled in the occult. He was a philanderer. Indeed, he invented a whole religion to sanctify male promiscuity. He was a grave-robber who hoodwinked gullible clients through chicanery:
ii) And there's additional evidence to impugn his credibility, such as divergent editions of the First Vision:
iii) As well as The Book of Abraham scam:
But entirely aside from the perhaps ultimately unresolvable question of his innermost character, Joseph Smith seems positively incapable of having pulled off such an enterprise on his own, unaided. He was, as those who knew him best readily and repeatedly noted, only marginally literate during the period of the production of the Book of Mormon.
From what I've read, he had a reputation for regaling people with tall tales about Indians long before his alleged encounter with an angel. According to his own mother, in her 1845 autobiography:
During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined: he would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent; their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their mode of warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.
Add to that the local stimulus of Indian mounds:
Certainly he seems an unlikely candidate to have produced a book manifesting all of the apparently authentic ancient and Near Eastern characteristics that the book quite arguably possesses.
i) I'll grant you that some of Smith's writings repristinate the polytheism and libertinism of ancient Near Eastern paganism.
ii) Assuming, for discussion purposes, that the Book of Mormon has some affinities with ancient Near Eastern literature, the fact that he was steeped in the King James Bible, familiar with OT historical narratives, and even wrote in mock-Elizabethan English, the obvious explanation is the influence of his source material in conditioning his style. For more detailed analysis, cf. Thomas J. Findley, “Does the Book of Mormon Reflect an Ancient Near Eastern Background?” In The New Mormon Challenge (ed. Francis Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), chap. 10–as well as David P. Wright, "Isaiah in the Book of Mormon...and Joseph Smith in Isaiah":
Back to Peterson:
Though there is, as we have seen, quite persuasive evidence that he was unfamiliar with the text as he translated it, and that he struggled with its proper names and some of its vocabulary.
Readers often struggle over how to pronounce biblical names. That's entirely consistent with general literacy.
Could he have fabricated gold plates? Where did he derive the metallurgical expertise? Where did he get the gold? (Just now gold is selling for about $275 an ounce. If William Smith’s estimate of the plates weight at 60 pounds was accurate, and if they were pure gold, their monetary value in today’s terms was something on the order of $264,000. More likely, they were gold alloy, but, clearly their value was far beyond the reach of a young son of a subsistence farmer.) Where did the gold go when he was done with it? Did he just give it away? Bury it? How was he able to produce the breastplate and other artifacts that they saw? Was he really up on the Hill Cumorah cementing a box and hiding it in the earth? Why did nobody notice any of this elaborate activity? Finally, it is very difficult to see how he convinced many of his associates to believe that they were seeing angels, experiencing miracles, hearing the voice of God and witnessing examples of otherwise impossible prophetic foreknowledge. For lack of a better word, such “supernatural” aspects of the story are exceptionally difficult to account for on a hypothesis of simple fraud.
i) Can could anyone see what the plates were made of if they were concealed by "thin muslin cloth"?
ii) Keep in mind that nobody in the 19C knew what the original Urim and Thummim or breastplate of the high priest looked like. No one stepped into a time machine to travel back to the Sinai desert in the 2nd millennium to view the originals.
iii) Wasn't Smith a grave-robber who stole Indian artifacts? Keep in mind, too, that in Colonial times, Indians traded with white settlers and soldiers. Assuming the whole tale isn't fabricated, what if that's the source of his stash, which he relabels as ancient Jewish artifacts?
Accordingly we are obliged to look at the suggestion that the Book of Mormon was the product not of simple fraud, perpetrated by one fiendishly, peerlessly clever individual…
Simple fraud doesn't require a fiendishly, peerlessly clever individual. It only requires suckers like Peterson.
...but of collective fraud. First, we look at the notion of “Collective Deceit (by Joseph Smith, the Witnesses, etc.).” This hypothesis would account for the “supernatural” elements of the story of the emergence of the Book of Mormon, in that it would simply allege that such things never happened.
What if Smith's "witnesses" were grifters? Crooks attract crooked associates. Sometimes that runs in the family. Consider Bill and Hillary Clinton and their entourage.
The first circle of this realm is the one I have called “Supernatural but demonic.” Those who recognize that no naturalistic hypothesis can account for the historical data regarding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, or for its seemingly strong links to antiquity and the Near East, but who still do not wish to take it as an authoritative spiritual guide, have this one last fallback position. They can concede virtually every argument advanced by advocates of the Book of Mormon, but neutralize the Latter-day Saint case by noting that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”25 In their support, they can cite the very words of Jesus regarding the last days: “Impostors will come claiming to be messiahs or prophets, and they will produce great signs and wonders to mislead even God’s chosen, if such a thing were possible.”Such an argument is difficult to deal with. It is perhaps fair to point out that such people themselves might be among those deceived. They should not discount that possibility. We are all fallible. But it is also fair to ask whether God is the kind of being who would allow people like the Smiths and the Whitmers and the Cowderys and Martin Harris and others, who, the historical data clearly indicate, were sincerely and prayerfully seeking him, to be led astray to perdition. If so, how can we trust Him in anything?
That argument either proves too much or too little. Mormons think God allowed billions of Christians to be deceived throughout church history.
How can any answer to prayer or understanding of scripture be relied upon?
How are the Mormon gods in a position to answer prayer? If they're merely physical humanoid beings, how do they have the knowledge and power to answer prayer? Can't be telepathy or telekinesis, since that presumes something like Cartesian dualism. The brain can't act at a distance.
In many cases, for a prayer to be answered, a chain of events must be underway long before the prayer is made. How do the Mormon gods know that before the supplicant even exists? How do finite gods have the necessary mastery over all the variables to prearrange that outcome?
The next possibility in the “supernatural category,” which I have called “True scripture, but not ancient,” seems, in principle, a little easier to deal with. According to this hypothesis, the Book of Mormon is true and authoritative scripture, but is not historically factual. That is, there were no real Nephites, Jaredites, and Lamanites. There was no real Lehi colony. Jesus did not really visit the Americas following his ascension in Palestine. The truths of the Book of Mormon on this understanding are purely doctrinal, or even poetic, set, for some reason, in a framework of narrative fiction. Or perhaps the Book of Mormon should be compared to the parables of Jesus, which teach important principles although they are clearly not intended as literal history. Nobody asks to know the real name of the Prodigal Son and his father, or the identity of their home village. It would be foolish to inquire after the name of the Good Samaritan or his patient.
It's my impression that that's an ace-in-the-hole for some Mormon scholars and apologists. If the Book of Mormon is hopelessly riddled with anachronisms and historical errors, they can say that doesn't falsify Mormonism because it was never meant to be historical. Rather, it was pious fiction or historical fiction all along. Of course, the cost for that move is to destroy the whole raison d'être for Mormonism.
Such a view obviously ascribes a certain value to the Book of Mormon. But it essentially neutralizes the value of the book as a second witness for Christ. For, if Christ did not really appear to real Nephites, it is less than obvious that the Book of Mormon constitutes independent evidence for His divinity, His atonement, and His resurrection.
Mormonism operates with a heretical Christology and soteriology.
Still, the fundamental problem with this notion is that it seems to involve God in purposeless deceit. For the fabrication of the plates and the breastplate and the Urim and Thummim and the stone box seems to serve little purpose other than to witness to the existence of a real ancient civilization that really created the text and whose history is really represented in its stories. And who, on this understanding, was Moroni, really? Why masquerade as an ancient Nephite, if there were none such? Couldn’t theological truths have been revealed in some other way, even in some other way attended by spectacular displays of “supernatural” power and glory, unaccompanied by misleading historical falsehoods? The Doctrine and Covenants was revealed without any mythical ancient history surrounding it. For, when all is said and done, the complex story in the Book of Mormon, with its genealogies and descriptions of battles and the like, turns out on this hypothesis to be nothing more than a lie. The parables were never intended to be taken as history. The Book of Mormon clearly was and is.
Because stories are far more gripping than dry didacticism.
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